Simulating Male Selfish Strategy in Reproduction Dispute

We introduce into the Penna Model for biological ageing one of the possible male mechanisms used to maximize the ability of their sperm to compete with sperm from other males. Such a selfish mechanism increases the male reproduction success but may decrease the survival probability of the whole female population, depending on how it acts. We also find a dynamic phase transition induced by the existence of an absorbing state where no selfish males survive.Comment: 7 pages, latex including 2 eps figure

Chaos and a Resonance Mechanism for Structure Formation in Inflationary Models

We exhibit a resonance mechanism of amplification of density perturbations in inflationary mo-dels, using a minimal set of ingredients (an effective cosmological constant, a scalar field minimally coupled to the gravitational field and matter), common to most models in the literature of inflation. This mechanism is based on the structure of homoclinic cylinders, emanating from an unstable periodic orbit in the neighborhood of a saddle-center critical point, present in the phase space of the model. The cylindrical structure induces oscillatory motions of the scales of the universe whenever the orbit visits the neighborhood of the saddle-center, before the universe enters a period of exponential expansion. The oscillations of the scale functions produce, by a resonance mechanism, the amplification of a selected wave number spectrum of density perturbations, and can explain the hierarchy of scales observed in the actual universe. The transversal crossings of the homoclinic cylinders induce chaos in the dynamics of the model, a fact intimately connected to the resonance mechanism occuring immediately before the exit to inflation.Comment: 4 pages. This essay received an Honorable Mention from the Gravity Research Foundation, 1998-Ed. To appear in Mod. Phys. Lett.

Death by starvation in May-Leonard models

We consider the dynamics of spatial stochastic May-Leonard models with mutual predation interactions of equal strength between any two individuals of different species. Using two-dimensional simulations, with two and three pecies, we investigate the dynamical impact of the death of individuals after a given threshold number of successive unsuccessful predation attempts. We find that the death of these individuals can have a strong impact on the dynamics of population networks and provide a crucial contribution to the preservation of coexistence.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figure

Transmission coefficient and two-fold degenerate discrete spectrum of spin-1 bosons in a double-step potential

The scattering of spin-1 bosons in a nonminimal vector double-step potential is described in terms of eigenstates of the helicity operator and it is shown that the transmission coefficient is insensitive to the choice of the polarization of the incident beam. Poles of the transmission amplitude reveal the existence of a two-fold degenerate spectrum. The results are interpreted in terms of solutions of two coupled effective Schr\"{o}dinger equations for a finite square well with additional $\delta$-functions situated at the borders.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1203.119

Nematic liquid crystal dynamics under applied electric fields

In this paper we investigate the dynamics of liquid crystal textures in a two-dimensional nematic under applied electric fields, using numerical simulations performed using a publicly available LIquid CRystal Algorithm (LICRA) developed by the authors. We consider both positive and negative dielectric anisotropies and two different possibilities for the orientation of the electric field (parallel and perpendicular to the two-dimensional lattice). We determine the effect of an applied electric field pulse on the evolution of the characteristic length scale and other properties of the liquid crystal texture network. In particular, we show that different types of defects are produced after the electric field is switched on, depending on the orientation of the electric field and the sign of the dielectric anisotropy.Comment: 7 pages, 12 figure